In this news:
President Donald Trump hosted a dinner Thursday night for the biggest spenders on his memecoin, a corrupt affair where rich people—many of them foreign and unable to donate to Trump’s political campaigns—paid for access to the president.
Trump held the event at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, using a taxpayer-funded military helicopter to get there.
He then appeared before a podium emblazoned with the presidential seal, even though earlier in the day White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that the event was not part of his official duties.
“On the president's dinner tonight, will the White House commit to making a list of the attendees public so people can see who's paying for that kind of access to the president?” NBC News correspondent Garrett Haake asked Leavitt, to which she replied that Trump wouldn’t be releasing the names because, “The president is attending it in his personal time.”
“It is not a White House dinner, it is not taking place here at the White House,” Leavitt said.
In fact, Leavitt’s claim that the dinner was a personal event and not an official one could open Trump up to legal peril, as the right-wing Supreme Court said Trump is only immune from prosecution for official acts.
Meanwhile, the people who attended—many of them foreign nationals who would otherwise be banned by law from donating to Trump's political campaign—explicitly admitted that they spent millions on Trump's shitcoin to gain access to Trump, The New York Times reported. That's as blatant of a "pay-to-play" scandal as it gets.
Among the guests was Chinese crypto magnate Justin Sun, who The New York Times reported spent $40 million to attend the dinner. Yes, FORTY MILLION. Sun was being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission with fraud, but the case was dropped after Sun injected tens of millions into Trump’s pockets.
And at the dinner, Sun received a gold watch from Trump, which Sun then gleefully posted about on X.
“As the top holder of $TRUMP and proud supporter of President Trump, it was an honor to attend the Trump Gala Dinner by @GetTrumpMemes,” Sun wrote in a post on X. “Thank you @POTUS for your unwavering support of our industry!”
Another foreign crypto investor, Sangrok Oh, even described the dinner as a fundraiser for Trump, The New York Times reported.
“He’ll always be good to his sponsors," Oh said, suggesting he expects a return on investment for giving millions to Trump.
And at the dinner, Trump promised to take steps to help line the pockets of the dinner attendees even more, saying “There is a lot of sense in crypto. A lot of common sense in crypto. And we’re honored to be working on helping everybody here.”
Democrats have been raising alarms about just how corrupt Trump's crypto venture is.
“This is the crypto corruption club,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) was heard chanting outside of the event, The New York Times reported, saying that Merkley was chanting so loud he lost his voice.
Already, Congress is helping mainstream the crypto industry with the GENIUS Act, which the Senate advanced earlier this week. The legislation would put a regulatory framework in place for stablecoins—a type of cryptocurrency tied to the value of an actual financial asset such as the U.S. dollar or gold—and legitimize the currency with investors.
But a number of Democratic lawmakers are against that, too.
“Americans didn’t send us to Congress to help Trump turn the White House into a crypto cash machine,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said on Thursday. “We can't look the other way when the President hosts a private dinner for his top meme coin buyers—or pass crypto bills like the GENIUS Act that would further line his pockets.”
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